Kings Park,April 4
A couple of songs into the first show of his Australian tour in Perth,Chris Isaak wandered offstage and began an odyssey so epic I thought the Kings Park management would send out a search party.
Chris Isaak embraces a fan during the show.Supplied
The California-born crooner kept singing — Don’t Leave Me On My Own,a pretty country number from his 1995 Grammy-nominated album Forever Blue — and accepting hugs and handshakes as he wandered up the hill toward the cheap seats (well,cheaper seats),as if he was looking for a lost friend in the adoring crowd.
At the end of the song and so far from the stage I couldn’t help but marvel at the wonder of modern wireless technology,Isaak made out like the show was over moments after it began.
“Thanks for coming. God bless you. Drive safely. Kenney,that show just flew by!”
The gags kept coming,even as he was about to launch into one of his heartbreakingly beautiful romantic ballads,with laughs and swoons,guffaws and sighs chasing each throughout the show in the heart of the park on a beautiful balmy autumn night.
Even when Isaak returned to the stage for the encore to belt out one the most erotic numbers in the canon of 20th century popular music — Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing,the bass-driven risque rockabilly contemporary classic that managed the impossible of making Tom and Nicole look sexy in Eyes Wide Shut – he wore a goofball mirror suit straight out of the Steve Martin playbook.
While Isaak’s vocal styling is modelled on Roy Orbison,he provides the model for his famously engaging stage act,right down to the garish outfits that he mocked so hilariously in the opening moments.
“I don’t know what kind of show you thought you’re gonna see tonight. But when you see a guy come out and he’s dressed like this and you’re not at a circus or a skating rink you look at him and say,‘that man is a semi-professional entertainer’.
“I’m not saying we’re top level,” continued Isaak,slipping into stand-up mode. “We’re not Taylor Swift level,but we’re semi-professionals. We’re right in there swinging.”
Isaak gave us cracking versions of his classics that bounced around in our brains for hours after the show.duncanbarnes.photography
Indeed,Isaak and his longtime band,Silvertone passed the audition and joined the ranks of the fully professional with a show as polished as the jewels of the pompadoured frontman’s suit.
For a performer who writes most of his own material and has been a big name for decades while never reaching superstar status,Isaak’s show is not all about him.
He feels like the leader of a band he’s been a part of for decades,with his drummer Kenney Dale Johnson providing the backbeat since his first album in 1985.
And what a great band it is. Time and again Isaak the vocalist stepped down and joined the other two guitarists,Hershel Yatovitz on lead and Rowland Salley on bass,in bouts of Z Z Top-inspired synchronised riffing,a showcase not just of sheer talent but how much joy these old-timers get from travelling the world and performing.
Isaak had a little local fun with a shout-out to our own resident 1960s guitar hero Hank Marvin,who apparently was in the audience.
He even had a little fun with Yatovitz for daring to play one of Marvin patented licks in front of the man himself.
While Isaak gave us cracking versions of his classics that bounced around in our brains for hours after the show — Somebody’s Crying,Wicked Game,Blue Hotel,San Francisco Days – the numbers that hit me hardest were when he dipped into the Roy Orbison oeuvre and slipped into Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling in Love.
These renditions of the classics revealed an artist who hasn’t simply been shaped by the foundational music of the 1950s and 60s but are a part of his being,a timely reminder that the art of the past,no matter how disreputable,is never past but be felt in everything we consume today.
Isaak doesn’t just honour the old songs:he continues to make music in which past and present blend so seamlessly and effortlessly they make us smile and break our hearts at the same time.
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